


if i loved you (could you stay?)

by teamfreehoodies



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Angst, But he figures it out tho, Emotional Hurt, Emotionally Constipated Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Queer platonic relationships, Unrequited Love, difficult conversations, even if they don't have the name for it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:54:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27915601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teamfreehoodies/pseuds/teamfreehoodies
Summary: He knows the way to Jaskier’s lodgings, knows by heart how to find the tiny row of cottages reserved for the professors and their families, knows too that Jaskier might not even be there: he’s not heard anything from the bard in months, not since—He shakes himself, turning away from the uncomfortable memories. What’s done is done. He only hopes he isn’t too late.A love confession gone wrong leads Geralt to try and fix his relationship with Jaskier.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt/Yennefer Mentioned
Comments: 38
Kudos: 124
Collections: The Witcher Quick Fic #01





	if i loved you (could you stay?)

**Author's Note:**

> Written/edited in 15 hours for quickfic
> 
> mind the tags yes? its unrequited for a reason

He’s mistimed his arrival. The hour is late; the streets empty. Roach’s hooves echo off the stone buildings that surround him, each beat another reminder of the silence expanding outwards. She huffs a nervous breath at him and he shushes her absently, stroking one hand down her neck as they wander the darkened streets.

He’s in search of the bard. Oxenfurt had seemed much livelier the last time he’d been through here, and the unusual stillness of the night feeds the uneasiness in his gut. This is a bad idea. 

Geralt turns down a sidestreet, half-hoping it will take him where he wants to go, and half-hoping it’s a dead end, unsure of his welcome. After the way things ended... It feels like an imposition to even be this close to Jaskier, but he can’t—

He drags one hand against the roughened stone next to him, suddenly afraid it’s not real: that he imagined having the idea to come here in the first place. The stone catches on his calluses, snags his fingertips; his hand crests an uneasy wave of motion as he passes through the alley, ducking under an open arch. 

There’s two-storey stone buildings on either side of him: proof of the city's prosperity, unless he’s wound up in the university proper. Small windows full of light shine out, casting golden pools of light on the ground, illuminating his path. 

A peal of laughter rings out, warm, and loud and immediately chased by a mockingly scandalized, “Maeve!” Geralt watches the window, tracking the shadows the two figures cast as they dance around each other. 

The laughter fades, turns into quiet murmings, then the rustling of fabric, a low gasp; Geralt moves on quickly, keeping his head down as he passes the window. 

He clenches his fist more tightly around Roach’s reins, tries to remember what he’s here for. The alley ends at another building’s wall where the path takes a sharp ninety degree turn going either north or south. There’s another window, another pool of light. He doesn’t let himself linger, pushing forward to pass it before the strange ache in his chest and heaviness in his boots can slow him down too much. _It's not the only way,_ he thinks, then startled by the strength of the thought, shakes his head to dislodge it. 

He’s being ridiculous. Roach bumps his elbow with her nose and he relents, stopping to dig an apple out the packs to give to her. She’s as much in need of rest as he is, after a hard day’s ride to get here, but the streets are empty, the night quiet, and he’s more than a little lost amongst the winding city streets. 

This is not the life he’s been bred for. Roach snuffles the offering out of his palm, filling the night air with the wet crunch of apple flesh, giving beneath her teeth. It’s not warm laughter and gentle teasing, but it’s close enough to what comfort a witcher has, out on the Path, that the sound soothes the yawning discomfort of being exposed. He bumps his head against her forelock, taking a moment to gather himself before he carries on. 

He’s putting it off, in truth. He knows the way to Jaskier’s lodgings, knows by heart how to find the tiny row of cottages reserved for the professors and their families, knows too that Jaskier might not even be there: he’s not heard anything from the bard in months, not since—

He shakes himself, turning away from the uncomfortable memories. What’s done is done. He only hopes he isn’t too late. 

Geralt follows the path mechanically now, sure of his way, if not his welcome. 

* * *

The house is quiet, but there’s a single bright point, a lit up window. Roach shoves at his back, nudging him forward. He hadn’t expected to find Jaskier still awake. 

  
Jaskier’s voice floats out of the open window; he’s singing a song, but it’s not one Geralt’s ever heard before. It’s slower than his usual fare, more the kind of tunes he’d sing at the end of a hard day’s travel, sitting around the campfire without his lute to accompany him. It’s... mournful, if Geralt had to put a name to it; slow and low and though he can’t make out the words, something about the shape of the song seems... sad. 

Geralt inhales sharply, letting go of his breath only when his chest tightens uncomfortably with the need for air. Roach bumps into him again, stomping one foot irritably as she tosses her head. It’s a small miracle she doesn’t make noise: he’s not ready to give away his position yet. 

The song carries on, uninterrupted, and when it ends the final note hangs in the air for several seconds, piercing the sharp bubble of dread in Geralt’s chest as it fades out. 

He leaves Roach at the gate, heading to the door with the same resolve that’s carried him into attacking griffons and wyverns and noonwraiths, grave hags and drowners and nekkers; all manner of loathsome thing has fallen beneath his blade and he won’t let a broken-hearted bard be the thing that finally bests him. 

His knock elicits a startled shout from the other side of the door, and then quick as a flash it’s opened, half a greeting dying on Jaskier’s lips before it’s even out of his chest. 

“Geralt!” he says instead, stunned.

“I’m sorry.” The words are out before he can think about them, ripped from the shriveled core of him that has spent the last two months counting days and replaying the broken ‘ _oh_ ’ on loop; shattered glass ground into dust against his heart

_Fuck._ Even his internal monologue is beginning to sound like Jaskier. 

Jaskier smiles, but it’s sad, and it doesn’t go past his lips. “You don’t have to apologize.” 

That isn’t... strictly true. But before he can say anything Jaskier is stepping back from the door. “You may as well come in, then, since you’ve come all this way. I’ve just put the kettle on.” Geralt follows him into the cottage, ducking through the doorway and immediately feels out of place. 

There’s a softness to the space around him, that has no room for a witcher in it. Everywhere he looks, there’s more evidence of a life built with no space for him. Wooden shelves line the walls with beautifully bound books stacked across them, and there are tiny delicate trinkets sprawled across the tops. The sitting room has a couch and an armchair, a small table cluttered with books and papers and empty tea mugs. Jaskier’s been composing, it seems. Geralt spies the lute on a stand in the corner, and then has to blink against the sudden wash of emotion that pulls into his chest. _Fuck._ He casts his eyes about for a distraction, gratefully drifting towards a spinning map of the continent that catches his eye. 

Jaskier slips into the kitchen, the whistle of the tea kettle calling out, and Geralt stares at the tiny representation of the Northern Kingdoms and tries to regulate his breathing. This is meant to be the easy part. Hadn’t he thought that just getting here would be the biggest hurdle? 

And yet... here they were.

“There’s space to sit over here, if you just...” Jaskier smiles when Geralt turns to face him, then nods his head at the adjoining room. “Follow me.” 

That aches, unexpectedly, but Geralt follows and lets Jaskier hand him a mug with tea in it, and sits where he’s directed. He stares into the mug, willing it to cool faster, or to say something. To say anything. To say the words sitting on his tongue and clogging his throat. 

The silence grows, a quick-spreading malady, and Geralt stares into his cooling tea and watches out of the corner of his vision as Jaskier’s smile starts slipping by degrees. 

_Fuck._

He can’t leave this to Jaskier to broach, not when he made Jaskier bear the burden of their last conversation, that last confrontation. Even then, he should have offered more than stunned silence, should have said something kinder than _“I love Yennefer”_ which had been cruel, though he’d thought it true, and even now, just remembering Jaskier’s surprised hurt makes Geralt’s heart clench; a discomfort he’d become more and more familiar with since Jaskier confessed he loved him and Geralt had sent him away.

The discomfort rises the smaller Jaskier’s smile gets, and his tea hasn’t finished cooling yet but he has to say it, can’t bear to watch that smile disappear entirely. 

“I’m sorry,” and it’s not what he meant, but it is what he feels, regret and sorrow pouring out of him like spurting blood, awkward and stuttering and too much. 

“Don’t—” Jaskier starts then cuts himself off, pinching his lips together and then turning away, so Geralt can’t see his eyes. “Don’t apologize, Geralt. Please,” he says desperately, still not looking at him. “I can handle it, I should have never—” he cuts himself off again, shaking his head slowly, side to side. His tea sloshes halfway up the side of his cup, and as if remembering it’s there suddenly, he downs half of it in one go.

“I—” just say it, fuck, just _say it,_ “I think I love you.” Jaskier freezes, like a clockwork machine ground to a halt, and Geralt freezes too, anticipation heavy on his tongue.

“You think?” Jaskier asks, dangerously soft. 

“I’m a witcher.” The wrong thing to say. Jaskier stiffens like he’s been struck. 

“You made a choice, _witcher._ ” Jaskier practically hisses the epithet. “I left, and you made a _choice_ to come all the way to Oxenfurt, you’re on _my doorstep,_ Geralt, you’d better have a damn sight more than _‘I think’_ and a shitty excuse to offer me!” Jaskier stands up, leaving his remaining tea sloshing on the table, and his chest heaves like he’s finding it difficult to breathe. Geralt is finding it difficult to breathe. 

“I didn’t want you to leave.” Because he hadn’t. He _hadn’t_. He didn’t know what he wanted. He doesn’t _want_ things, is unused to this, to _sentiment._ He’s a witcher, and he’s led a witcher’s life, and now Jaskier wants things of him he doesn’t know that he can give. 

“Then why didn’t you stop me!” Jaskier shouts, an outpouring of rage and grief and something else; the air is salty with the scent of tears, still spiced slightly with the tea fragrance. “I gave you twenty-five years of my life Geralt! Twenty-five years!” Geralt’s chest twists, a knife pushed deeper. “I would have given you twenty-five more and said _nothing,_ kept it all to myself, but _you!_ ” Jaskier points at him, an accusatory finger like an arrow headed home, “ _You_ had to ask!” 

It had seemed a simple question. “ _Why are you here, when you could be anywhere else? Why follow me, why sing these songs, why endure any of it, all of it? Why stay by a witcher’s side?”_

It had had a simple answer too, for all that everything after was now so fucking complicated.

 _“I love you_.”

“I didn’t know that was the answer!” Geralt growls back, instinct pushing up: attack hard and fast and quick; witchers prepare for combat, not conversation. 

“Oh, don’t give me that _shit,_ _Geralt!_ It’s been an open secret as long as I’ve known you, and I didn’t—” Jaskier cuts himself off, heaving for air again, “I didn’t ask to fall in love with you, or, or,” his voice is wet, choked, and horrifyingly, Geralt feels the same happening to him. “to be so fucking stupid, and useless. I didn’t _ask for this!”_ he shouts, and Geralt wants to fix it. He can fix this.

“We can go back,” he offers, an olive branch, nearly shredded. “I’m here now, we can—” He pauses as Jaskier scoffs, feeling strangely hurt and unsettled by the anger roiling off of him now. “We can travel together again,” he says, he _asks,_ hoping against hope that Jaskier will say yes, that they can put this behind them and go back to the way things were. 

“You’re not listening!” Jaskier laughs, but it’s not a happy laugh; cold and harsh and unforgiving. “I said I love you and you watched me leave and now you want to _what?_ ” Jaskier throws his arms wide, nearly knocking the tea off its perch on the table. “You want to fucking pretend it didn’t happen!? Go back to before you forced the words out of my mouth?” 

“I didn’t know you would leave.” Geralt growls, frustrated and angry and no small amount of hurt. “I thought I had time.” 

“Give me a break!” Jaskier shouts, “Time!? You need time? After twenty-five years you need _time?!”_

“I don’t know what love feels like!” Geralt roars suddenly, goaded into responding the way he’s only ever been able to be by Jaskier. No one affects him like this, save Yennefer, but that’s terrifying in its own way, even as it’s easier to understand. 

“Bull _fucking_ shit!” Jaskier yells back, unafraid and so incandescently furious that Geralt automatically steps back as he leans forward. “I’ve never met a man who loves so deeply in my entire life, Geralt of Rivia, and I am so _fucking_ angry at you, but you don’t get to come in here and tell me it’s because you ‘don’t know what love feels like,’ or that it’s because you’re a witcher, or it’s because of Yennefer, or whatever flimsy excuse you were going to cook up next. You don’t get to tell me you _think_ you love me, and then leave that on me, you don’t _get to do that_ when it’s been twenty-five _godsdamned_ years of loving you and _I would have taken it to my grave_.”

Jaskier heaves for breath in the sudden silence of his confession. “I never would have told you. But you asked. And you were supposed to be in love with me too.”

What can he say to that? He needs Jaskier, but not the same way he needs Yennefer, not the same way that Jaskier wants him.

“I don’t want to lose you, Jaskier.” This is the last hope he has, the truth laid bare and let Jaskier do with it as he pleases. “I can’t—” Jaskier sits down, dropping back into his seat but his eyes are burning where they land on Geralt’s skin, and he’s hyper-aware of every flaw that Jaskier might see. Every crack that might reveal too much of the rotting ichor he’s calling blood these days. “I can’t love you the way you love me, or the way you deserve, but I _need_ you.” 

A conversation held so long ago, and Geralt can only hope that Jaskier remembers it. 

“You _need_ me?” Jaskier whispers, terribly soft. “What do you need me for, Geralt.” It should be a question but Jaskier’s voice is so quiet, the inflection is muted to almost nothingness. 

Everything. But how can he say that without giving away the whole of himself? Doesn’t— doesn’t Jaskier deserve that though? After everything, doesn’t he already have the total sum of who Geralt is, in twenty five years of memories shared and saved and treasured? How can he give him anything less?

“I need you to be by my side Jaskier. I want you to need me the same way.” It's a love confession the only way Geralt has ever known love, but it's not the kind of confession Jaskier wants from him. Jaskier wants them to be _in_ love, not just to have it. Geralt wants to be able to make that leap for him, but he can't. A failure he's lost more than one sleepless night over.

“What would that make us?” Jaskier asks, still horribly despondent, a fragile thread of desperation wound through his voice. “Mere travel companions, bound together with nothing? Friends and nothing to tie us together?” 

“Why are you so desperate to give up your freedom? Why would you want to be bound, when you have seen what binding has done to Yennefer and me?”

“Because it’s a choice, Geralt!” Jaskier near shouts, standing up again with the passion of his plea, “You have gone along blithely through everything and run from every choice you’ve ever made and I won’t go with you only to wait for you to run away again! You bound yourself to Yennefer and kept her, and then you bound yourself to Ciri and kept her too—” he cuts off, heaving, then adds much quieter, “I just want to be worth _keeping,_ Geralt.” His voice breaks— a horrible sound, like glass, shattering into dust. 

“I ran away from both of them too,” Geralt whispers back, burdened by the enormity of his sins against these people that he cares so deeply for. His love is a dangerous thing to carry. He’d forced it on Yennefer, and they’d exploded for it. He’d bound Ciri to him on accident, and look what destiny had done to bring them together; he wouldn’t give her away, but the pain caused by his actions weighs on him, drags him down, makes anchors of his bones. 

“That’s not the point, Geralt!” Jaskier cries, and then shakes his head roughly, “ _Gods_ ,” he adds, laughing through tears, “only you can do this to me, I swear.” 

“I would give you anything in my power to give, Jaskier. You have to know that.” It’s true, it’s horribly, terribly true and it’s worse that even with that, he can’t give Jaskier what he wants.

He’s not in love with him, not the way Jaskier is with him, but there’s a bond there regardless, one that’s deeper than any bond save that of his brother’s, save that of his child, save that of his lover. He loves Yennefer in a way that makes sense to him: sex and desire and affection, things they both grew up without and can give to each other in their own stumbling ways. He loves Jaskier too, but not... Not like that. Not romantically, for all that that’s exactly what Jaskier wants from him. 

Geralt's words hang in the air between them, as silence falls in the wake of his confession.

“You shouldn’t have asked me.” Jaskier says eventually, startling Geralt. “But I gave you your time. Give me mine?” 

“Time?” he asks, a single desperate curl of hope unfurling in his stomach. 

Jaskier laughs, tears glittering in his eyelashes as he smiles at Geralt. It’s still so sad, and still doesn’t reach his eyes. “You came back, and—” he wipes his eyes, “you need me.” Jaskier shrugs, looks back up at Geralt and then smiles again, but this time it’s bright and unforced and so much more like himself. 

“You don’t love me and that, fucking _hurts_ , but someday I’ll be okay with it." He continues, "For now, would you please stop shouting down my roof? The neighbors are cantankerous bastards on the best of days, and there’s only so much of their twaddle I can stand.” Jaskier reaches out to clap Geralt’s shoulder, and Geralt, relieved and shaky, and so fucking tired suddenly, pulls him into a hug instead. 

Jaskier sinks into him, pressing his face into his shoulder: Geralt ignores the growing dampness, taking comfort in having the bard close to him after so many months apart. He reacted poorly, and thought Jaskier lost to him forever— this is beyond what he’d let himself hope would be at the end of this particular journey. He can give Jaskier time. 

Jaskier’s fingers are tangled in the back of his shirt. Geralt feels each point of pressure like a promise. He holds Jaskier tighter, pressing his cheek into his hair— Jaskier is nearly as tall as Geralt, and they fit together like a matched set; like his swords, faithful and constant and true. 

Jaskier sighs, clenching his hands into fists around the cloth of Geralt’s shirt. “You can stay the night, but please don’t be here in the morning. I’ll come find you when I’m ready, and it will be like it’s always been.” Geralt, heart turned to stone in his chest, nods and squeezes the bard’s shoulders more firmly into his embrace, like he can keep him there if he just holds on tightly enough. “We’ll be okay.” Jaskier offers, and Geralt feels the last of his fear crumble to ash, flaking away with every second Jaskier stays in his embrace. 

“We’ll be okay.” Geralt echoes, and, for once, he really thinks they will be.

**Author's Note:**

> Love takes many forms, and I personally headcanon Jaskier as being fully in love with Geralt in the show but Geralt isn't in love with him. I want them both to be able to acknowledge how intense their friendship is, hence the Queer Platonic tag. Like I really think after this and after Jaskier has his time, his love can soften and he can redirect his romantic attraction to someone else, and just the pure friendship love will remain and boom Queer Platonic LIfe Partners in Adventuring can commence.
> 
> anyways, let me know what you thought? kudos comments etc. always appreciated


End file.
